"You see in my chamber," said Goethe, near the close of his life, "no sofa; I sit always in my old wooden chair, and never, till a few weeks ago, have permitted even a leaning place for my head to be added. If surrounded by tasteful furniture, my thoughts are arrested, and I am placed in an agreeable, but passive state. Unless we are accustomed to them from early youth, splendid chambers and elegant furniture had best be left to people who neither have nor can have any thoughts." Rogers, the banker poet, once said to Wordsworth, "If you would let me edit your poems, and give me leave to omit some half-dozen, and make a few trifling alterations, I would engage that you should be as popular a poet as any living." Wordsworth's answer is said to have been, "I am much obliged to you, Mr. Rogers; I am a poor man, but I would rather remain as I am." Thomson solicited Burns to supply him with twenty or thirty songs for the musical work in which he was engaged, with an understanding distinctly specified, that the bard should receive a regular pecuniary remuneration for his contributions. With the first part of the proposal Burns instantly complied, but peremptorily rejected the last. "As to any remuneration, you may think my songs either above or below price; for they shall absolutely be the one or the other. In the honest enthusiasm with which I embark in your undertaking, to talk of money, wages, fee, hire, etc., would be downright prostitution of soul." Thomson, some time after, notwithstanding the prohibition, ventured to acknowledge his services by a small pecuniary present, which the poet with some difficulty restrained himself from returning. "I assure you, my dear sir," he wrote to the donor, "that you truly hurt me with your pecuniary parcel. It degrades me in my own eyes. However, to return it would savor of affectation; but as to any more traffic of that debtor and creditor kind, I swear by that honor which crowns the upright statue of Robert Burns' integrity--on the least motion of it, I will indignantly spurn the by-past transaction, and from that moment commence entire stranger to you! Burns' character for generosity of sentiment and independence of mind will, I trust, long outlive any of his wants which the cold, unfeeling ore can supply; at least, I will take care that such a character he shall deserve." His sensitive nature inclined him to reject the present, as proud old Sam Johnson threw away with indignation the new shoes which had been placed at his chamber door. "I ought not," says Emerson, "to allow any man, because he has broad lands, to feel that he is rich in my presence. I ought to make him feel that I can do without his riches, that I cannot be bought,--neither by comfort, neither by pride,--and though I be utterly penniless, and receiving bread from him, that he is the poor man beside me."